The problem is that everyone know that other cards are accepted everywhere apart from the olympics, or at least Mastercard is.

This is more like BMW deciding to sponsor the construction of a road and only allowing their cars to pass.

I've seen Lexus sponsor parking lots or garages at sporting events, and lexus owners get to park for free. everyone else pays full price

Yeah, but this is like: only allowing people with Lexuses to enter, everyone else... just can't get in.

You can still pay by cash, no?

Are those like coupons you can redeem for things? Many people have not used cash for years.

Most people have never owned a Lexus.

And that's exactly the type of positive marketing that works! Give something, and people will like you.

In a rural town in the UK I tried to get some money of my Mastercard on a Visa-branded machine. Didn't work. A friend tried with a Visa card and that worked like a charm. It sounds more like a common practice in the UK.

Denmark had something similar with Visa as well. Apparently it works since I am now very likely to get a Visa-card next to my Mastercard for those just-in-case situations.

That story makes no sense. We don't have "visa branded" cash machines. They're all run by third party merchants and they universally support something called LINK which allows all the major card vendors to hook in.

I'm sure your card failed to work but I doubt it had anything to do with a big Visa logo on the machine.

I can't think of a time in the last decade when I've seen a card reader or cash machine that didn't accept Visa and Mastercard (I'm in the UK).

Were you traveling to the UK? If so, then your card's fraud department probably just declined the card. They're super picky these days, you really need to call the card company now before you travel internationally.

If you ever had AmEx (I do) you already know that, a lot of places in US and more in Europe do not accept AmEx. When I go to some place I don't know I usually take AmEx, Visa and Mastercard - one of each. It can be very useful in all kinds of weird situations - like when I had some ticketing machine in Europe that was sure every Visa has a chip and a PIN code (American ones of course do not) - but it gladly accepted AmEx without any codes. So variety helps :)

So, I'd say it indeed may be a good idea to have a Visa card - along with their competitor's cards.

I find that "the only card accepted everywhere" very amusing :) I spent 5 days in Berlin recently and I found lots of places that either were "cash only" or they only accepted "Maestro" cards.

I had two Visa cards that I couldn't use, so frustrating.

EDIT: typo

Yup, credit cards are not really a thing in germany